WHY IS MEMBERSHIP IN THE CSRAO IMPORTANT?

The CSRAO represents a group of people who share a common purpose – to provide a verbatim transcript of various proceedings, and voice-to-text communication access for those with a hearing loss – whether in court, in discoveries, in hearings or interviews, meetings, events or in the broadcast world – in a timely way, delivered with the utmost professionalism. The CSRAO’s purpose is to educate its members, to provide the public and the legal profession with independent testing and accreditation of its members in an unbiased and neutral way, to provide those accessing our services a measure of baseline quality that has been independently tested and assessed, and to represent its members’ interests.

By attending CSRAO events, members have the opportunity to associate with like-minded professionals, with friends and colleagues, and with those new to the profession looking for guidance and mentorship. At CSRAO events, each member is linked with a group whose clear vision is that of creating a professional, accurate, highly readable record through highly skilled, accredited service providers – shorthand court reporters and CART/captioning writers.

There is no doubt that the CSRAO provides a place for old friends to get together, for Fellows and Associates to catch up with one another and share information – from technology to great shorthand outlines – and to provide a place where one doesn’t have to feel the isolation many reporters and captioners do as a result of our work.

Business is about connections. All professionals know that networking is one of the crucial keys to success. By attending events and participating in workshops or writing articles for our journal, court reporting and captioning professionals can spread their wings, let others know they are out in the field and open new doors in their careers.

As a student of court reporting, becoming a member of the CSRAO will provide you with encouragement, a wonderful learning experience and an ability to begin to network with employers in the industry. It can also provide you with the opportunity to create a mentorship relationship – an opportunity that is invaluable to correlate your education to real life as a guardian of the record or as someone’s “ears.”

Lastly, the CSRAO provides a wonderful venue to share ideas around our profession and to also share our feelings about our experiences – whether it’s how to deal with a difficult client, how to be sensitive to the needs of a hard of hearing individual, or how to help a student get over a hump at a certain writing speed. It is a place for sharing concepts and technology, and a place to shape our place in the legal industry.